


the truth is that i'm sorry

by whataboutateakettle



Category: Please Like Me (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Break Up, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 17:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10167983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whataboutateakettle/pseuds/whataboutateakettle
Summary: a hangover, three coffees, and too many apologies. in that order. // Post series finale.





	

The first thing he notices is that there’s something warm and heavy lying on his chest. He opens his eyes, and then immediately squeezes them shut again. That’s the second thing; the world around him is awfully, hideously bright and his head seems to catch up with his body and he’s dizzy and nauseous and pained all at once. He tries to open his eyes again; or rather he squints, turns his head as much as he can.

Where is he? _Wait_. Why doesn’t he know where he is? He’s not sure which question is making him more nervous.

He moves his head as gently as he can, manages to look down far enough to see what the warm thing on his chest is. John. John? John is definitely tucked up next to him, on what seems to be a couch, his soft fluffy golden dog head is resting on his chest.

The thing is, if John is here then –

“Oh good. You’re awake,” a voice says suddenly from behind his head. Not a voice, Josh.

Arnold strains his neck the other way, trying to see him. Josh is standing there, holding a large glass of water. He doesn’t know what to say. Literally, he can’t think of a single thing that would be appropriate for this moment. So instead he forces himself to sit up slowly. His body hates every moment of the movement, and so does John apparently, because he whines a little as he reshuffles himself to the end of the couch.

Josh hands him the water, and walks back to wherever he came from. Arnold chugs half the glass as quickly as possible before twisting himself to see where he had gone. Over the back of the couch, he can see the kitchen, and Josh in it. It’s all white cabinets and stainless steel. Josh is pulling three large mugs from one of the cabinets and setting them onto the counter.

The silence between them is tense and heavy and Arnold is trying to figure out how to break it when Josh decides to do that for him.

“TOM! To-ohm! Arnold’s awake now!” Josh yells out and the sound feels like it bounces around the room, only getting louder before it finally hits Arnold in the temporal lobe. He winces, loudly, and chugs the rest of his water. 

“Wait. What did you say?” Tom’s voice yells back from some other room. There’s no way Tom didn’t hear that. Surely. He’s pretty sure the whole block heard that.  

“Arnold! Is! Awake!” Josh repeats, much, much, much louder than necessary, as he’s pouring coffee into each of the mugs.

It’s almost a miracle when Tom finally appears in the kitchen.

And then there’s more silence as Arnold watches them brings the mugs over from the kitchen. Tom sits himself down next to John, and Josh sits on the coffee table. He gives him this look, one which Arnold can’t even begin to decipher, mostly because his brain still isn’t working properly, and holds out one of the mugs.

“Uh, thanks,” he nods, putting the empty glass on the floor and taking the mug from him. “I don’t – I don’t really remember much from last night.”

Josh stares at him for a moment, and it makes Arnold’s stomach tighten in all sorts of ways. What happened last night? How did he even get here? He’s sure he’d start to remember if something could just jump-start his brain.

“Hey Tom,” Josh says suddenly, sliding his gaze across, “What was your favourite part of last night?”

His face is straight, but his voice is giving him away. This is going to be bad. Arnold takes a sip of the scalding hot coffee, just to have something to do.

“Oh, I dunno Josh,” Tom starts, his expression matching Josh’s, “Maybe it was when the buzzer rang at like 2am waking us up and turns out it was Arnold. And that he was smashed off his face.”

Yep, this was definitely going to be bad.

“Or! Or was after we had very graciously invited him into our home and asked him why he was here and he just started crying? He just stood there and cried.” Arnold whips his head back and looks at Josh who just raises both eyebrows at him. “What did you think of that Tom?”

“Oh yeah, that part _was_ pretty great,” Tom agrees, taking a loud sip of his own coffee.

Arnold is pretty sure he wants to melt into the ground, or into this couch. And maybe disappear forever.

“No, actually,” Tom starts again, “I think _my_ favourite part was when you were getting Arnold some water and he just starts gay-kissing you.”

Fuck. Fuck. He knows what happened after that.

“No, no, wait!” Josh waves his free hand around, and he’s actually grinning now, actually enjoying this. “What about when he was kissing me, right? And then he just stops, and just stares at me for almost a whole minute before he bends over and throws up.”

Arnold winces, and it’s not even the headache anymore, just the sheer embarrassment. “I am _so_ sorry.”

“Arnold, you threw up in my kitchen. Look how nice that kitchen is, your vomit was all over that.”

“At least he apologised,” Tom reminds him.

“Mm-hmm,” Josh nods, “You do have a point. And at least you stayed the night. It wasn’t like a hit and run situation.”

“A hit and vom.”

“At least, at least you didn’t just like, come in, make out with _me_ , your ex-boyfriend, then throw up on my kitchen floor and just leave. Like a maniac would. Only a maniac would do that. That would have made me feel really very weird. Not like this completely normal situation right here.”

“I feel like an idiot,” Arnold mutters, burying his face into his mug, again. He can feel Josh’s sparkling eyes staring at him.

Tom reaches over and pats his shoulder gently. “Great, but if you feel sick, the bathroom is the second door on the right.”

* * *

They finish their coffees over awkward conversation, and then Tom excuses himself, because apparently he’s _writing a novel now_ and Sundays are his writing days. Josh calls out after him with half a dozen mocking remarks, and for a split second Arnold feels like nothing has changed.

“So, Arnold.”

“Yes, Josh?”

“You want to tell me why you showed up at my home smashed off your face?”

No, no he doesn’t. But at this point he’s just relieved that Josh didn’t ask him how he even knew when his flat was (he now remembers calling Hannah, who gave it up without question).

“No, I - it’s not -” he shakes his head, all the words sounding wrong. “I’m really sorry.”

Josh nods, “Well, that’s great. But like, considering that that my hands have literally touched your vomit in the last 8 hours, and also your tongue has been inside my mouth, not in that order, I feel like maybe I could get some sort of explanation. Like, maybe, a reason why that happened?”

“I had a panic attack and then Kyle broke up with me. In that order.”

There’s a pause. A heavy, tense, awful pause and Arnold realises that in his voicemail, and in few times they had talked since then, Arnold had never told him that he was seeing Kyle.

Josh frowns, “He broke up with you because of your panic attack?”

He shook his head, “No, he - well, he _said_ it wasn’t because of that. He said it was because he didn’t feel like he could make me happy. But that was what he meant. Not just the panic attack, but like...” he trails off, waves his hands around his head a bit and hopes that Josh gets what he’s trying to say.

“That’s shit of him, isn't it?”

Arnold nods, “Only it made me feel like shit too, and so I went out and I had too much to drink and I honestly don’t even know how I got here.”

“I think you ubered,” Josh says.

“I’m sorry.” He says it again, knows he sounds like a broken record.

“For what part?”

“For all of it, I shouldn’t have come over. And I shouldn’t have vomited in your kitchen. And I _really_ shouldn’t have kissed you.”

Josh shrugs his shoulders, “I preferred the kiss over the vomit, to be honest.”

He's not smiling but he's not angry either, and Arnold gives up on making sense of it, drags his eyes away and scans over the room he’s been awake in for almost an hour.

“This place is really nice.”

“Yeah, it’s alright. Better than the old house with all that junk lying around.”

He looks back at Josh who, the entire time he knew him, hadn’t once called his stuff junk. “I liked that house.”

“You didn’t like it when you found that mushroom growing in the shower.”

“No, that was disgusting and awful,” he shudders and when he opens his eyes again Josh is grinning at him.

He realises the last time he’d seen Josh was in a gay bar. They both awkwardly said hello to each other, and then awkwardly made up awkwardly obvious reasons why they couldn’t stay and talk. He realises then that he misses him. Not in a _Love_ way. Maybe. He doesn’t think so. But in a Friend way. Actually in a Home way. Josh, and John and Tom and Claire and Ella and the mushroom in the toilet, they were his home in ways that his own family never really was. Of course, he loves his family, but he’d always felt like the adopted one. With Josh, he didn’t feel adopted. For a long time it felt like that was right where he was meant to be.

Until it didn’t.

But sometimes he still misses that feeling.

“So, uh, what are you doing today?”

Josh is smiling, but shaking his head. “We’re not doing this? Are we doing this? I don’t think we should be doing this. Like _at all_.”

“Doing what?”

“Pretending to be friends.”

“Oh.”

Josh’s eyes widen, and maybe he sees the way Arnold’s face dropped, or maybe he feels bad, and he shakes his head again. “Not that we weren’t ever friends! Of course we were, even when we were like _way more_ than friends. I just think maybe right now we’re not. Because we broke up and we haven’t really talked in like 9 months and this feels really weird.”

He stands up, like he doesn’t even think about it, he just does. “I should go.”

Josh stands up after him, but he’s nodding his head.

Arnold leans down to scratch behind John’s ear, and smiles gently. “Good bye, John.” And then calls out to wherever Tom had gone, “Bye Tom!”

“Bye!” Tom muffled voiced comes from the other room.

Josh leads the way, and Arnold follows him quietly. His jacket is hung up on the hook by the door, and he pulls it down and on as Josh is opening the door for him. Everything feels like it happening really fast, but also in slow motion.

Maybe his brain is just trying really hard to remember this, every detail of it.

He walks out the door, but stops and turns on his heels. Josh is leaning against the door frame.

“I never got to tell you, but um, I’m really sorry about your mum.” The words feel cheap in his mouth, and he doesn’t know how to explain that that’s not what he meant.

Josh just gives him a small smile. “Me too.”

He wants to apologise for more. For the kitchen and the kiss and Kyle. But Josh is looking at him like it’s okay to not say anything and maybe he should just do that. So he offers him a small smile in return, and he goes to leave.

Then Josh’s hands land on his neck, and they pull him back and then Josh’s lips are on his.

His lips are soft, and the mole is still there, but he doesn’t taste like Arnold remembers. Maybe it’s the coffee or the hangover or the 9 months. It’s not bad; actually it’s kind of beautiful.

But it doesn’t last long. Or maybe it lasts too long. Either way he doesn’t know what to say when Josh pulls away from him, his hands leaving his skin and leaving it cold.

“I just,” he starts, crossing his arms across his chest, “I didn’t want the last time we kissed to be when you were drunk off your face. I mean, as a memory it’s pretty shit, isn’t it?”

Arnold can feel his heart speeding up and he takes a long deep breath, swallows it down. He’s determined not to make this a big deal, not here, not now.

It sounded so final, the way Josh said it. The words spin around in his head. And he just nods.

Josh steps back, into his new flat, and he lifts his arm to give Arnold a tiny wave. By the time he lifts his own arm, the door is shut.

He stands there for a moment, staring at a closed door, expecting his heart rate to get faster, or his eyes to tear up. But instead he’s surprisingly calm.

That's okay. Maybe this is the most okay he's been in a while.

And then he goes home.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written mostly because I was very sad about what Arnold's last scene on the show was, and I didn't really have anyone to talk about it. Please talk to me about this! 
> 
> Also I'm sorry, because I did not expect it to get this sad. It's supposed to to be bittersweet. Like that moment in Love Actually, after Keira Knightly kisses Andrew Lincoln, and then he just whispers "Enough. Enough now." to himself. 
> 
> The title is from Troye Sivan's song Lost Boy, which is really a very good Josh x Arnold song if I'm honest.


End file.
